12, Alexander Joy Cartwright became involved in playing town ball (an older game similar to baseball) with the Gotham Club of New York at Murray Hill in Manhattan.

Creating a club for the ball players called for a formal set of rules for each member to adhere to, foremost among them to "have the reputation of a gentleman".

According to his own account some fifty years later, his written rules for the Gotham Base Ball Club in 1837 eliminated "plugging"[citation needed] the runner and laid out the infield as a regular diamond.

"Two of these rules—the one that abolished soaking [putting a runner out by hitting him with a thrown ball] and the one that designated a foul as a do-over—were revolutionary, while the others gave the game a new degree of uniformity.

According to Wheaton, "The new game quickly became very popular with New Yorkers, and the numbers of the club soon swelled beyond the fastidious notions of some of us, and we decided to withdraw and found a new organization, which we called the Knickerbocker.

When the National Association of Base Ball Players was founded in 1858, the Knickerbockers began to lose their influence, and the club died out entirely in the early 1870s, after baseball had become thoroughly professionalized.